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I n May 2009, a young man named Xavier Dolan    arrived in Cannes to present his new film, the 

story of a troubled relationship between a mother and her son. In May 2014, a young man named Xavier Dolan arrived in Cannes to present his new film, the story of a troubled relationship between a mother and her son. Just five years passed between 

Dreaming Bigger, Screaming Louder INTERVIEW: Philip Concannon

the release of Dolan’s debut feature I Killed My Mother and his latest film Mommy, but the difference we can see in the artist who made them is extraordinary. What looked like raw potential in 2009 has since been brilliantly realised.

Although the subject matter and the presence of Anne Dorval and Suzanne Clément in the cast list may encourage us to draw comparisons between these two films, Dolan refutes any suggestion that Mommy is a revisitation of earlier themes. “A movie about mothers and sons is like a movie on human beings,” he tells me. “It really is just so vast a theme, and encompasses so many, many, many possibilities for characters who are defined by quests and dreams 

and personalities rather than just titles.” In general, Dolan is a man who is too busy looking forward to contemplate what’s behind him, but he is conscious of the progress he has made so far, admitting that he finds it hard to watch some of the more jejune moments in his first two features. ”Certainly, every new film is a new opportunity, not necessarily to explore things you haven’t explored in previous endeavours, but more likely to avoid repeating mistakes you’ve made in those,” he explains.

As well as eliminating those mistakes, Dolan has ventured boldly into exciting new territory. After shoo- ting his 2012 film Laurence Anyways in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, Mommy finds the director squeezing the frame 

THE CINESKINNYN0 2 / 21-23 FEBTHESKINNY.CO.UK / CINESKINNY

Quebecois firecracker Xavier Dolan says he sees cinema as revenge against the mundanities of everyday life. With his brilliant new melodrama Mommy, that revenge is served piping hot

23 Feb, GFT, 8.30pm | 24 Feb, Grosvenor, 3pm

continues…

even further, utilising a 1:1 ratio that takes some getting used to but pays off spectacularly during the course of the film. He and his talented cinematographer André Turpin previously experimented with this style on a music video they made for Indochine’s College Boy (which also starred Mommy’s Antoine Olivier Pilon), but there’s a big difference between a technique working for a 6-minute music promo and a 139-minute feature. “I didn’t know Mommy was my next movie when I shot College Boy. I figured it out a couple of weeks later,” he tells me, “André and I realized that any- thing in the ‘middle-range’ shot-wise was a waste of our time; it was either close-ups, or very large shots. Anything in between was oddly inelegant, even ugly, and seemed com- pletely incompatible with the square aspect-ratio. It’s been used over centuries for portrait photography, and portraits really are what fill it in with the most sense, and harmony.”

It’s funny to hear Dolan talk about harmony in the context of Mommy, because this is a film largely defined by dishar-mony. With his characters often at each other’s throats and with every emotion being pushed to the limit, that tight frame seems ready to burst at every moment, and Dolan clearly relishes this type of storytelling. “I’m not interested in docu- mentary-like restraint and pastel-toned characters acting like losers. It’s not that I only relish histrionic display and balls-to- the-wall scenes; there is a time for silences, and calm and rest, and I love to find the balance between both.” Mommy is a full-throttle melodrama and Dolan makes no apology for that, in fact he believes that cinema should offer a heigh- tened alternative to our reality rather than a reflection of it. “I just think that life can be boring enough to the point where cinema is – more than any other media or art – its revenge. So characters are allowed to dream bigger, scream louder, cry uglier, sing better, dance without shame, and have the last say with sassy dialogue that they perhaps couldn’t come up with in normal life. They are allowed to win.”

Some subjects elicit a particularly passionate response from Dolan. Having begun his career shooting on digital, the director has since moved to 35mm, transitioning in the oppo- site direction to most contemporary filmmakers, and when asked about this choice his answer is unequivocal. “Look, 

with all due respect to masterful cinematographers and the tastes of other artists, I fucking hate digital,” he says. “It’s just ugly, and an absolute deception. It is lifeless, flat, soulless and a lie. Sometimes extremely talented people make it work, but there always is a scene where you see it, in the whites, in the trees, it just is a lie and it takes away the film’s life.” You can add Xavier Dolan’s name to those of Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and other fervent 35mm advocates, but Dolan is pessimistic about the medium’s future. “I just fear the time when film will disappear. I appre- hend it so badly because I know that, when it happens, I’ll keep making movies but I’ll watch them and something will be forever missing. I’m afraid that would be life.”

“ I fucking hate digital. It is lifeless, flat, soulless and a lie” Xavier Dolan For the time being, Dolan is still shooting on film and still 

making movies his way at his own phenomenal pace. He is currently in production on The Death and Life of John F. Donovan – his first English-language feature, starring Kit Harington and Jessica Chastain – but he is already thinking beyond that film to the future. I ask him how far down the road he is looking and his answer surprises me: “Far, far, far down indeed. You never know what will go, and what won’t. So, I don’t know…I’d say…as far as six years down the road?” Xavier Dolan will only be 31 years old then, and considering the way his work has evolved over the course of the past five years, I’m relishing the prospect of seeing what he has produced at an age when most directors are only warming up. One thing is for sure – everything he makes will be produced with the same passion and intensity that has distinguished his films to date, and he has little time for critics who decry these aspects of his work. “I will never tone down my characters or deprive them of their traditional soliloquies and big eruptions just to please people who love sobriety, and tamed personas,” he states defiantly. “Cinema is a spectacle – wake up!”

21 FEBHIGHLIGHTS

Power Suit YourselfCCA, from 1pmLook out your shoulder pads, folks, because power suits are back – for one day, at least – as GFF celebrates female power dressing in cinema, from Mildred Pierce to Working Girl.

When Animals DreamGFT, 8.45pmThe coming-of-age film com- bines with the werewolf movie in this nifty little shocker from Denmark that does for lycan- thropes what Let the Right One In did for blood-suckers.

Cinema, City, Ceilidh!St Andrew’s in the Square, 7pmIn this night paying tribute to Glasgow on film, you can show off your reel while you admire a showreel of movies that show off No Mean City.

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REVIEWS

Alê Abreu’s The Boy and the World begins with a blank white screen and revels in the infinite freedom before it like a kid let loose with crayons. Crafting a caco- phony of colour and sound, the film is a relentless, dreamlike carnival of fantastic images and otherworldly grooves. To tell the simple story of a small boy’s journey to the big city in search of his father, Abreu brings out every instrument in his artistic arsenal, utilising paint and pencil of every kind and colour. Calling

attention to the brushstrokes and pencil lines it’s built from, The Boy and the World acts like a vibrant celebration of hand- drawn animation and the fundamental magic of watching lines on paper come to life. More than just an exercise in style, though, Abreu’s film pulls off moments of stunning emotional power. The rainbow- coloured dancing world of its child prota- gonist is drawn against the harsh dark tones of the modern city grind, making the film in turn totally exhilarating and deeply, beautifully melancholic. [Ross McIndoe]

Director: Alê Abreu

Starring: Marco Aurélio Campos, Vinicius

Garcia, Lu Horta

The Boy and the World

22 Feb, Odeon at the Quay, 12pm

28 Feb, Cineworld Parkhead, 3pm“Revels in the infinite freedom before it

like a kid let loose with crayons”

Keep up-to-date with our daily online GFF coverage over at facebook.com/TheSkinnyMag, @theskinnymag and @skinnyfilm

Working Girl

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on ExistenceGFT, 2.45pmRoy Andersson concludes his deadpan trilogy about “being a human being” with this knock- out tragicomedy. Cinema doesn’t get any droller.

The Fall of the House of Usher Pollokshaws Burgh Hall, 8pmJean Epstein’s take on Poe’s classic tale gets the live score treatment from the team who brought you The Passion of Joan of Arc at Glasgow Cathedral a few year’s back.

The Clouds of Sils MariaGFT, 5.30pmOlivier Assayas looks to be back in Irma Vep territory with this study of stardom starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. Shades of All About Eve, we hear.

ONLINE REVIEWS

Mommy

White God

Rosewater

Stray Dog

Still Alice

Tender

Head to theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny for more reviews, including...

52 Tuesdays chronicles the relationship of 16-year-old Billie (Tilda Cobham-Harvey) and her transgender mother, James (Del Herbert-Jane), who makes the dif- ficult decision to transition from female to male – and, as a result, away from her daughter. Initially accepting, Billie agrees to live with her father and only see James for six hours every Tuesday. The film represents queer characters as fully human – selfish, virtuous, mun- dane; suffering the micro-aggressions of heteronormativity. Made on a minuscule

budget with amateur actors, director Sophie Hyde employs an intriguing filming modus operandi. Shooting over consecutive Tuesdays for a year, actors would learn only their current scene, no reshoots. This production method lends the film a temporal, existential veracity; its narrative ebbs and flows, reflecting the queer identities on screen, always in flux. James and Billie both filmically document their personal transitions, from female to male and child to sexual maturity respectively, in an attempt to make sense of themselves. Frustrated at the ever elusive end point of “becom-ing” an authentic self, Billie fumes “It never ends!” James confirms, “No, it doesn’t.” [Rachel Bowles]

Phoenix opens like a horror movie. A disfigured woman, her face swaddled in bloody bandages, is crossing the German border following the fall of the Third Reich. But director Christian Petzold’s touchstone isn’t Eyes Without a Face – it’s Vertigo. She’s Nelly (Nina Hoss), a holocaust survivor en route to Berlin where she hopes to have her muti- lated face reconstructed. The operation isn’t a success; so much so that when she seeks out her husband, who may or may not have given her up to the Gestapo, he doesn’t recognise her. Instead he

enlists her into a ruse to pose as his wife, who he presumes perished in the camps, so he can claim on her inheritance. It’s a hokey twist, worthy of a Preston Sturges movie, but here it takes on heart- breaking proportions. We buy the prem-ise because of the film’s dreamy quality: Phoenix’s Berlin is a rubble-strewn laby- rinth and its inhabitants walking ghosts haunted by the recent past. Much of the film’s power emanates from Hoss, who’s mesmerising as a woman pretending to be someone else in front of her husband, who in turn coaches her on how to look and behave like her true self. The alle-gorical implications are clear: Nelly is her nation, scarred and changed forever, but trying to find itself again. [JD]

Director: Christian Petzold

Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld,

Nina Kunzendorf

Phoenix

22 Feb, GFT, 6pm

23 Feb, GFT, 1.40pm

22 Feb, CCA, 8.30pm

23 Feb, CCA, 1.30pm

Director: Sophie Hyde

Starring: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del

Herbert-Jane, Imogen Archer

52 Tuesdays

22 FEBHIGHLIGHTS

A pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence

“ Narrative ebbs and flows, reflecting the queer identities on screen”

“Phoenix’s Berlin is a rubble-strewn

labyrinth”

Include #cineskinny in your Twitter reviews and we’ll include the best in our daily reader review round-up

William McIlvanney: Living with WordsGFT, 6pmHe’s the ‘Godfather of tartan noir’; without his Laidlaw novels, there’d be no Taggart, no Rebus. Director Maurice O’Brien and McIlvanney him-self will attend the screening, so grab a whisky from the bar and spend some time with Scottish literature’s Don.

Margaret Tait Award: Stoneymollan TrailGFT, 7pmThere’s no advanced word on Charlotte Prodger’s Margaret Tait Award piece yet, but if the work of past winners is anything to go by, this world premiere is not to be missed.

Buster Keaton NightOld Fruitmarket, 7.30pmPaul Merton and pianist Neil Brand celebrate cinema’s deadpan master with a night of classic comedy, live music and insight into this fascinating filmmaker and performer.

GFF Box Office

Order tickets from the box office at

www.glasgowfilm.org/festival

or call: 0141 332 6535

or visit: Glasgow Film Theatre

12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB

info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

Produced by The Skinny magazine

in association with the Glasgow

Film Festival:

Editor Jamie Dunn

Designer Sigrid Schmeisser

Illustration Louise Lockhart

Digital Peter Simpson

Subeditor Will Fitzpatrick

23 FEBHIGHLIGHTS

The Skinny Short Film ShowcaseThursday 12 March | 7.15pm, CCA, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow FREE ENTRY: tickets available on the day from CCA box office

Saluting Hollywood’s MaverickINTERVIEW: Philip Concannon

“I  couldn’t make a conventional film about an uncon-  ventional filmmaker.” That was the credo documen-

tarian Ron Mann worked to as he developed his new  film Altman, an affectionate and unusual portrait of the great Robert Altman. The task of covering Altman’s entire  life and work in a single documentary is an impossible one, so Mann instead focused on trying to capture his essence. He asked a number of the filmmaker’s collaborators to define the word ‘Altmanesque’ and built his film around their answers, with their wide ranging definitions (“Fearless,” “Expect the unexpected,”“Inspiration,”“Making your own rules”) coming close to summing up his iconoclastic spirit.

Mann also felt it was important to preserve the director’s unique voice, and that the best way to do so was let Robert Altman tell his own story. Spending a summer in the director’s archives at the University of Michigan, Mann found enough interview audio and video footage to construct a narration, and he was astonished at the wealth of material he had at his disposal. “We accumulated over 400 hours of material, so to look at that in real time took ten weeks,” he says, “Then I said to Kathryn [Altman’s wife] one day, ‘Were there any Super-8 films?’ and Matthew and Bobby [two of their sons] had 150 home movies. A filmmaker doesn’t usually have this kind of bounty or treasure trove of material available to them, and I’m not really a spiritual person but it almost felt like Bob was helping this film along.”

As well as being a labour of love for Mann, who cites his viewing of M*A*S*H at the age of 12 as a formative experience, Altman is also a family affair, with the director’s widow Kathryn Reed Altman being heavily involved in the produc- tion throughout. “I was not familiar with Ron or his work, so I did some research and I heard him described in interes- 

ting ways, which applied completely and thoroughly to the Altman aspect; words like quirky, not middle-of-the-road, a really good filmmaker but not your run-of-the-mill guy,” she tells me, and she felt it was important that the film captured both the highs and lows of her husband’s storied career.

After making his breakthrough in television, Altman enjoyed enormous success in the 1970s before being exiled from Hollywood in the 80s, and then making a triumphant return with his acerbic industry satire The Player. “He just kept busy and kept thinking all the time; he was a creative force,” Kathryn says. “One thing led to the other and he just wanted to keep branching out into something new, some- thing different.” She remains astonished at his capacity to keep going in the face of disappointment and rejection:  “I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve never seen it in some- body before or since and it always amazed me.”

Watching Altman was an emotional experience for Kathryn, particularly the home movie footage featuring her husband and children, and the remembrance of the night he received his lifetime achievement Oscar just a few months before he died. “He resisted that particular award, probably three or four years in a row, and he had a whole committee in the Academy who kept pushing for him,” she recalls. “He kept saying ‘I don’t want that old man’s award, I’m not through working.’”

Robert Altman’s next film A Prairie Home Companion was to be his last, but his work lives on, feeling richer and more vital with every passing year. When I ask Mann for his own definition of Altmanesque, the word he leans towards is “indestructible.” “Bob’s view of filmmaking was that they’re sandcastles you get together to build with friends, the tide comes and washes the sandcastle away, and what’s left is the memory,” he says. “I think Bob built sandcastles that were indestructible.”

Altman director Ron Mann and Kathryn Reed Altman discuss the “indestructible” filmmaking force of nature, Robert Altman

22 Feb, CCA, 6.20pm | 23 Feb, CCA, 4pm

William McIlvanney

Include #cineskinny in your Twitter reviews and we’ll include the best in our daily reader review round-up

“I couldn’t make a conventional

film about an unconventional

filmmaker”Rob Mann